[issue7850] platform.system() should be "macosx" instead of "Darwin" on OSX

[Ronald Oussoren]

New submission from Ronald Oussoren <ronaldoussoren at mac.com>:

The output of platform.system() should IMO be "macosx" on OSX to ensure that platform.platform() is consistent with distutils.util.get_platform().

The same is true for sys.platform, although it is unclear how much code that would break.

There are two reasons for wanting these changes. First of all the values tend to end up at locations where less sophistated users might see them unless we're careful (tests for 'sys.platform' in scripts, platform names in distributions, ...) and 'darwin' is not obviously related to MacOSX unless you're already quite technical.   The other reason is slightly nit picking: "Darwin" is the name of the kernel and a stand-alone unix based on that, which MacOSX is the name of the entire system which includes much more beyond basic unix stuff.


BTW. I know why sys.platform is "darwin" on OSX, that doesn't mean I have to like it ;-)

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components: Library (Lib)
messages: 98801
nosy: ronaldoussoren
severity: normal
status: open
title: platform.system() should be "macosx" instead of "Darwin" on OSX
type: behavior
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.2

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue7850>
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